Real-Time Thoughts On Live Aid (The Whole Fucking Show, Part One)

It’s 12 noon in London. Seven AM in Philadelphia. Last Tuesday in Kyoto. Children of the 80’s, this is your Altamont. And now we welcome the King and Queen of Britain, Stan and Lucille Higgenbottom. Stand up, Stan. Wave, Lucille.

Stop that.

I cannot believe the Enthusiasts are making me do this.

It’s not them. It’s never them. It’s you. It’s always you.

I know.

Look how I’m spending my life. Watching a concert from 87 years ago featuring acts I’ve never heard of or actively despise. Jesus. What went wrong, and where? How can I fix it?

Look how they massacred my boy.

Anyhoo: that’s Status Quo, and they were big in England. (This will be a recurring theme.) Literally–and I’m using the word in the old-fashioned, correct sense of the word–everything I know about Status Quo is due to their involvement in Live Aid. Also, they don’t look right, and I’m not just talking about their jeans. They look like they belong in different bands. Remember how The Beatles always kinda matched, even after they stopped wearing the suits? Status Quo is the opposite of that. The lead singer looks like a snooker cheat from Birmingham, the guitarist is–somehow–a surfer dude from La Jolla, and the bass player is some sort of orc. (The drummer doesn’t get any close-ups, but I’m just gonna assume he’s an aesthetic misfit, too.)

Oh, I’m not gonna be able to make it through 3 hours of mid-80’s pub rock. I may have to skip quite a bit of the pre-America section of the concert.

The Style Council? WHAT DID I DO TO GOD TO DESERVE THIS? I wanna know. I need to know. The Style Council sounds like a goblin rapingGODDAMMIT, YOU PUT THAT HARMONICA AWAY! Okay, I can’t subject myself to this. Skipping ahead.

(Before I move on, it should be noted that The Style Council is actually pretty decent; that song I posted just happens to be the worst one they played.)

Oh, Saint Bob. You canonized Caledonian. It was about the fookin’ children–they were dying, DYING, dontcha unnerstand?–and not you. Which is why someone else–not you, definitely not you–switched the Rats’ spot with Ulravox’ so you could sing your school shooting number in front of Princess Diana.

They had to get the Royal Family. If not the Queen, then Diana. Her husband could come along if he had to, but Live Aid was about Rock Stars and she was the one who wore the leather pants in that marriage. This wasn’t just a concert, dammit. It was about the world! And feeding it! The Queen or Diana would give Bob what–despite his punk-tinged protestations–he so desperately craved: status. Bob hated those fancy fuckers right up until the very instant they started being nice to him.

OF NOTE: The Boomtown Rats are dreadful, and the bassist is playing a Steinberger.

Di and her husband came around before the show to meet the Rock Stars. They had been corralled into a backstage holding area and lined up against the wall to form a receiving line. They stood at parade rest like nervous little boys.

That’s how famous Princess Diana was, Younger Enthusiasts: her presence caused David Bowie to make that face.

I’m skipping Adam Ant, and you can’t make me feel badly about it. You don’t have that power; I do not grant it to you.

Ultravox, too. I don’t hang with dudes named “Midge.” Guys named “Midge” are why Trump is gonna get reelected.

And Spandau Ballet. I’m sure there are Spandau Ballet partisans out there, but I started this project far too late, and that means bands are getting tossed off the boat.

Ah, the first American of the day! Remember, this was not a concert: it was an EVENT. It was too big for one stadium, or country, or even a continent. Live Aid happened simultaneously at Wembley Stadium and JFK in Philly. 16 satellites bounced the feed back and forth as the ocean-separated venues alternated acts so that there would never be any downtime on the teevee. This is the big time, baby! I wonder what American superstar they got to open?

Goddammit, it’s Joan Baez.

We actually could disband ICE like all those foreign lady-commies in Congress want to. Just blast Joan Baez at people in the country illegally. They’ll leave.

But you can’t be fast-forwarding through Elvis. No matter which one: Stojko, Presley, Duran. Elvis has forgotten his band at the pub, but acquits himself nicely on All You Need Is Love, with help from the always-happy-to-sing-along British audience.

Honest question: who remembered Elvis Costello played at Live Aid?

Skipping Nik Kershaw. Spell your first name right, jackass.

The initial Band-Aid single inspired imitators around the world. Every country with a music industry did their own version, and that included Austria. Their contribution towards fighting African hunger was called Warum? (Why?) You don’t want to watch the whole thing, but you should see this:

And also this:

Austrians don’t fuck around, man.

OHGODNONOTSTING

JESUSCHRISTPHILCOLLINS?

I’m getting double-teamed by Sting and Phil Collins? I am the Unluckiest Pierre that ever lived. I ask again: what have I ever done–excepting all the times I’ve deeply disappointed and betrayed my loved ones and/or strangers–to deserve this?

They’re duetting on Every Step You Take, and Sting is wearing his loose, flowy summer whites. He looks like he should be at one of Diddy’s parties, chatting with Jeffrey Epstein, and fuck my ass Phil Collins has a mullet.

And they roped poor Branford into it, too.

I hope you didn’t make it all the way through. I hope you’re better than that.

No, Howard Jones.

No, Bryan Ferry.

Holy crap, no, Paul Young.

Oh, I’ve fucked up this entire timeline. I was looking at the Wikipedia page, which lists London and Philly as separate shows. This is the correct program. I take full responsibility for this gross dereliction of duty, but–in my defense– I used up all my patience for research yesterday. Also in my defense: this is perhaps the least vital topic on the planet. It matters to no one at all if I get this right. I owed the dead African kids a little bit of respect, but not Phil Collins.

Anyway, I missed Billy Ocean and the Four Tops. They were two of the remarkably, noticeably, regrettably few black artists involved in the day, which was–if we recall–for Africa. None of the major American (or English) black acts showed up. No Michael Jackson, Prince, Diana Ross, Lionel Richie. Sure, both Ashford and Simpson were on the bill, but you’d rather have Prince. In the aftermath of the event, many fingers of varying shades were pointed at everyone else as to why the lineups were so danged pale.

Hey, here’s something black!

Gotcha.

(You do not need to watch that. Black Sabbath should not play in the daylight. It’s objectively wrong. Also: Ozzy is fat and sad. Ozzy’s had easily a half-dozen “fat and sad” periods in his career, and this was one of ’em. Plus, they’re playing too slow. Additionally, Tony Iommi and his shitty brick of hair can fuck himself forever.)

Hey, kids! You wanna know what the 80’s were like? I know you watched Stranger Things and so you think you understand the 80’s, but you do not. You can not. Not until you see this:

There ya go, kids. That was the 80’s.

Oh, REO Speedwagon had backup singers special for the day:

Why, yes: those are the Beach Boys. And, why, yes: that is Paul Shaffer. This is your Woodstock, children of the 80’s.

Global jukebox, Enthusiasts. That was the concept. The broadcast was hitting 150 countries, but quite a few of them were contributing as well. Australia, Japan, that fucked-up Austrian bullshit I showed you. And the Soviets, too, giving us two songs from their biggest rock act, Autograph. (Rockyroll was technically illegal in the Societ Union at the time, so Autograph may have been their only rock act.) This was a coup! Music changing the world, maaaaan. We and the Soviets had not been getting on too well in the 80’s, possibly because our president kept waving his withered cock at them every chance he got. But a worldwide audience was certainly a wonderful venue to display the glories of Communism and the Soviet system, so the apparatchiks said Da and so the technicians wired what looks like an abandoned whorehouse in Minsk oblast and waited for the satellite of love to pass overhead.

But Communism breeds incompetence, Enthusiasts, and so the visual feed for the first two minutes of Autograph’s performance were from a documentary about cherry-pickers.

How are these people beating us?

You should go buy David Browne’s book on ’em, but I fucking hate Crosby, Stills, & Nash. I hate Crosby, I hate Stills, and I hate that fucker Nash. Adding Young does not change my opinion for the better or worse.

And now we’re doing the German supergroup’s tune, live from Cologne. Except the group’s not German, is it? It’s West German. The world can change so much when it chooses to.

I’m not gonna post it. You don’t need to see it. Trust me. This happens:

Now that you’ve seen that, you’re glad I didn’t post the whole video, right? You’re welcome. I look after my people, man.

PRIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEST! Fuckin’ PRIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEST! The screeching-eagle vocals of Rob Halford! The window-shattering guitar duo of Glenn Tipton and K.K. Downing! The bass player and the drummer! PRIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEST! England gets Bryan Ferry and Howard Jones, but America gets Sabbath and Priest. (From England, obviously, but whatever. My point stands. Being that the main impetus behind the show was in London, there was a glut of Brit acts and some got sent over here to fill in the patches that Bill Graham had left in the schedule. We’ll get to Bill’s behavior.)

Okay, I’m skipping Paul Young again, and also Bryan Adams. I can’t listen to him after finding out how he treated Mandy Moore. (Who was in Southland Tales! See how all my obsessions fit together in a pattern that only I can see or decipher?)

Shit, it’s Bono and his little group.

BULLET POINTS!

• His mullet is glorious.
• It’s a fullet.
• U2 were not the globe-bothering sensations they would soon be.
• Bono’s full impact had not yet been made.
• Many countries were still in debt, for example.
• Bono has taken care of that recently.
• Bono is bueno.
• The Edge is well on the way to baldness here.
• That overhead shot of him is not flattering.
• And now the little prat is singing Lou Reed, and you know Lou was watching.
• Lou liked to watch thing on teevee.
• I bet he used an ethnic slur.
• Lou like to watch things on teevee, and using ethnic slurs.
• That’s the kind of guy Lou Reed was.
• Feathered on top, brushed-back on the sides, and free-to-be-you-and-me in the back: MULLET!
• Look at this bullshit:
• 
• School bus in the front, booze cruise in the back.
• Is that what Oliver Cromwell was mad at the Irish about?
• Because I kinda agree with him.
• So far the Irish’s contribution to the day has been Bob Geldof and Bono.
• Not a great package.
• Although, Billy Connolly was one of the teevee presenters, and he’s a titan of a man.
• Now Bono is making a spectacle of himself.
• He is one of the very few performers who realized that he was on a teevee show.
• Dives into the crowd, ten feet down off the stage, to save a fan caught up in the crush,
• She is–and you’ll be shocked by this–a comely young lass who he then slow-dances with and kisses.
• Right in front of the camera.
• Crafty fucker knew where the cameras were the entire time.
• Almost like he planned it.
• And now Bono is kneeling, and singing Stones songs as The Edge goes DUGdugga DUDdugga with his reverb pedals behind him.
• He has chosen the section of the stage directly in front of the photographer’s pit to kneel and sing.
• Crafty little fucker.
• HE’S SINGING LOU REED AGAIN!
• Leave Lou out of your bullshit.
• Lou Reed thinks dead African kids are funny.
• No more U2.
• On the positive side, no band could be worse than U2.
• Show’s gotta get better.
• Right?

FUCK.

And, Jesus, they brought Brian.

Why did Dr. Landy let him wear that?

This was 1985, so most of the original Beach Boys were still alive and speaking to one another: Al Jardin’s there, and the one with the beard, and the guy who looks like Michael Palin, and Carl. Mike Love’s there, too, because his Klan rally got cancelled.

(Was there any musician you were less surprised to hear loved Basketball Head than Mike Love? Besides Nugent and Hank Williams the Younger, that ita Those two are gimmes.)

It seems that everyone has forgotten Dire Straits. Mark Knopfler and whoever the hell else was in that band sold 100 million records over their run, and Live Aid was smack in the middle of their world tour for the Brothers In Arms album, which sold 30 million.  I mean smack: Dire Straits were booked to play that very night (one of a 13-night run) at the 12,000-seat Wembley Arena, so when their set was over, they had to run back–guitars in hand–to the smaller venue.

This is what’s known in show business as a Cadillac problem.

Not gonna lie: I never did mind George Thorogood and his giant teeth. I thought he looked cool with his massive white Gibson. Plus, he brings Bo Diddley out to jam. Howard Jones didn’t do that.

On the other hand, his band sucks.

FUN FACT: George Thorogood got married this month, July of ’85, to a woman named Marla, and they’re still together.

It’s 18:41 Greenwich Mean Time, 7/13/85, and the (arguably) most famous performance in rockyroll history is about to take place. Let’s just enjoy this together, shall we?

And that’s all there is to say about that.

(According to legend, Freddie hit on virtually every Rock Star in attendance, especially Bono, while drinking champagne and trading catty insults with Elton John. Freddie Mercury knew how to have fun.)

Neither Mick nor Bowie could attend, so they made this, but then they both ended up showing up. They played the video anyway, because it’s Mick and Bowie. It comes at an appropriate moment in the show: two queens following Queen. Seriously: it’s gayer than Larry Kramer’s sock drawer. Let’s just move on. Miles to go before we sleep and whatnot.

(David Bowie did not open for himself, Enthusiasts. I skipped Simple Minds; I’m sure you can understand.)

The two main concerts, in London and Philadelphia, were produced by Harvey Goldsmith and Bill Graham, respectively. They had different approaches to life. Harvey, it seems from his Wikipedia page, chose to play the game. France gave him a Chevalier de Arts, and England made him a Knight. All sorts of awards and major successes and proud moments. Bill Graham engaged in a decades-long feud with Paul Simon. Different approaches to life.

The run-up to the date was rife with tension, mistrust, and outright swindling on both sides of the Atlantic. Buuuuuut mostly from Bill. He chased so many acts off that Harvey and Bob Geldof had to send over bands, in some sort of sick, backwards reenactment of the Lend/Lease Act.

Fuck, man. How is Bowie dead?

Remember Mengistu? The guy I told you about yesterday who ruled Ethiopia after Haile Salassie? The one who murdered two million people? That fucker’s still alive. He’s in exile in Zimbabwe. Bowie’s dead, though.

God deserves a good punch in the nose.

So, yeah: none of the foreigners have anything nice to say about Bill Graham in any of the articles or documentaries, and Bill’s dead so he can’t defend himself. He did tell his side of the story in his ghost-written auto-oral history, but he left out the part where he was addicted to cocaine at the time, and he also left out the part where he tried to 86 the network camera crews a half-hour before the show started.

I’m skipping The Pretenders.

Oh, God, there’s so much left and not enough night in which to do it. You can’t possibly want two straight days of this bullshit, so I might just ripcord out somewhere around Patti LaBelle.

The Who, too. I’m sorry, The Who.

And Santana, but I am not sorry. I do not enjoy you, Santana. Bill Graham did, but fuck him; he’s dead and can’t yell at me. Take your latin-flavored guitar wizardry away from me. Begone with your ever-present headwear.

It is now dark in London, and the sound is dreadful. There were technical problems. Go watch that Urban Myths video I posted: that shit’s true. Bob and Harvey put together the Wembley show in just a few weeks, and the whole production was jerry-rigged. They didn’t have enough power, There weren’t enough trailers for the stars. A presenter from the BBC who just happened to own a helicopter was pressed into service picking up musicians. (The downdraft destroyed Elton John’s garden to the tune of a quarter-million pounds.) Half of The Who’s performance didn’t make it onto the air due a generator melting down.

The sound gets better, though:

KIKI FUCKING DEE, MOTHERFUCKER. Love me some Kiki Dee. This song’s a banger that slaps and bops. It is a slapping, bopping banger. And the horns! If you’ve been idly scrolling through this–HOLY SHIT, 3000 words?–then this is the video you want to watch. Plus, Elton is wearing an oversized fez. Nobody took going bald as hard as Elton John did.

Rock Nerd Alert! Included in Elton’s band is everyone’s favorite overly-demonstrative percussionist Michael Cooper.

Cocaine Nerd Alert! Elton is under the influence of cocaine.

22 years old. George Michael. Only 22. Great ass.

Oh, no, they made poor Andrew Ridgeley stand in the back with the backup singers and Kiki Dee to do the harmonies. That’s heartbreaking. That’s like when the Stones threw Ian Stewart out of the band but still made him drive the van.

Additional Rock Nerd Fact! Andrew Ridgeley married one of the Bananaramas.

Sad Fact! (Not a fact that is in itself depressing, but rather a kindness revealed about a human that, after the realization that this human is no longer with us, will make you sad.) George Michael wrote all of Wham’s hits by himself, but he gave Andrew Ridgeley a writing credit. It was enough money to share, George must have thought. A lot of people wouldn’t ever think that.

Does it make me racist to skip Ashford & Simpson? What about skipping Ashford & Simpson and Kool & the Gang? I think maybe skipping both of those acts makes me racist. Ah, well. The die is cast.

Madonna, like U2, was but a fraction of the superstar she would soon be, and had recently made the papers again when Penthouse published nude photos of her–hairy bush and pits included–she had posed for years before. Madonna was furious, she told every reporter she could find. Simply furious!

Her performance here is uncompelling, at best, but not a trainwreck. She plays one hit–Into The Groove–but chooses an album cut to follow it; the crowd has no idea what it’s hearing. Give ’em the hits, Madge! Plus–and I don’t know if this is an industry secret that I’m revealing here, but I am a journalist–Madonna can’t sing. Not well, at least. She has trouble with the notes. You’d much rather watch her dance, or hold a mirror up to society’s sexual foibles, or not return Camille Paglia’s phone calls.

Hey, it’s Freddie and Brian! Why this drippy and sub-par smear of a tune was included at all–let alone right before the climax of the London portion of the show–is a mystery to me.

And it’s come to this:

Bob Geldof got his Royal, and now he needed a Beatle. Credibility, my friends! Your money is not going to scruffy Dublin punkers, nosiree, Bob. You’re giving your quid to a Beatle. You can trust a Beatle. Give us your fookin’ money.

(For those keeping score at home, I cannot label this a full-on Benefit Concert Show-Closing Super Jam. Gotta play Hey Jude for it to be a full-on BCSCSJ.)

BULLET POINT TIME:

• Bite me, Geldof.
• Stop being sincere.
• It doesn’t hang well on your shoulders.
• They should’ve buried George Michael in Westminster Abbey along with all the other royalty.
• And the British crowd just cheered so loud at the Tonight thank God it’s them line, and context has been left at the side of the M1, bleeding and coated in its own shit.
• So many gingers.
• HA!
• There’s one black lady on stage.
• One.
• And they give her the mic and she HURRICANES the pop stars with their little pop voices.
• It should also be noted that they are singing Do They Know It’s Christmastime in July.
• When it is not, in fact, Christmastime.
• In a calendar sense, it is the exact opposite of Christmastime.
• I’m glad that’s over.
• Seeing George Michael and David Bowie is making me sad.

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

NOT THE WAITING. I LOVE THIS SONG. STOP BEING DEAD, TOM PETTY.

Hey, slugger.

Uh-huh?

You’ve written 3600 words–without saying much of anything–on a subject no one cares about. And there’s, like, five hours of concert to go. It hasn’t even gotten dark in Philadelphia yet.

Can I watch the rest of Tom Petty?

Sure.

Love me some Petty.

I know, buddy.

My brain feels like shag carpet.

Yeah. Let’s hit the sack, huh?

Sack!